Fateful Circle

PART 4

 
When I resurfaced into the waking world, gasping for breath, I smelled smoke. My whole body hurt, a searing agony, as if I were dying in truth as well as in my dream. Yet nothing seemed to be wrong with my body.

 
The light I saw was not that of the gleaming stars, but much brighter. The firth appeared to be afire. Shaking off the confusion and terror of my nightmare and ignoring my pain as best as I could, I rose to find out what was happening. When I parted the bushes, I saw what it was that burned: the ships, the beautiful white swanships of the Teleri, the likes of which they said they would never make again... Shapes were outlined against the orange glare, watching the flames eat the graceful white birds, and I recognized the figure of my father, standing tall and rigid among the others.

 
For a moment, my heart stood still; then it bolted. When I raced toward my father, I ran into someone who had just turned his back to him: my eldest brother Maitimo(1). 'Damn!' he spat, and at first I thought he was angry with me for crashing into him, but it was not so. 'Damn him!' he repeated. 'He's betrayed them... his brother... our cousins... Findekáno(2), who came to our aid in Alqualondë... He's out of his mind!'


I thought I was going out of my mind as well. 'Have you seen Ambarussa?' I said, groaning, for all the time the white-hot pain kept searing through my body. 'Did he come ashore?'
'Ambarussa?' Maitimo repeated without seeming to comprehend, as if I had uttered a word in a strange language. Then, he suddenly seemed to see me. 'No, little brother,' he said, his tone much more gentle now. 'The only Ambarussa I see is you. What...'


But I was already past him, storming ahead. I grabbed my father's arm where he stood watching the burning vessels, and he wheeled. His eyes were dilated, and I saw his expression was one of sheer delight. 'We do not need them anymore,' he said gleefully when he recognized me. It wasn't clear whether he meant the ships or our kin beyond the sea, betrayed and abandoned.

 
I did not dwell on it. 'Have you seen Ambarussa, my brother?' I gasped.
'You mean Ambarto,' Fëanáro corrected me, recognizing me as the elder of his twins by my slightly darker hair. When Nerdanel gave us one mother-name, he had demanded we should each have a name of our own. She had resisted long but finally given in, calling the younger of us Umbarto, the Fated. But pretending to mishear her, he had turned it into Ambarto - as if he thought he could change Fate.

 
Suddenly, my pain was gone, vanished completely, yet instead of feeling relief, I felt my fear increase. 'Did you see my brother?' I repeated, anxiously.
'Why do you look so pale?'
'Did he leave his ship? Did you not rouse him? He would not come ashore... to sleep in discomfort,' I added, hiding Ambarussa's true reason.

 
My father did not blanch, though for an instant I saw the flame in his eyes waver. 'That ship I destroyed first,' he said flatly, pointing to the charred remains of a hull adrift on the waters of the firth.

 
It was then I knew the reason for the agony I had felt, and I shook as never before. 'Then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children,' I cried to him, 'and Umbarto was its true form, as Mother said. Fell and fey you are become.'
He turned and strode away, a spirit whose fire had burned his own son. I sank to my knees and sobbed.
 
***

The memory has always remained fresh, my heart, cut in half, never stopped bleeding, and the yearning still makes me ache: one Ambarussa, lying in a burning, throbbing circle of love. But I am fated now to grieve and yearn until the end of Arda, and perhaps beyond.
The circle is broken. My brother became Umbarto and we were sundered forever. As his mind was set on suing for pardon, his reful ful fëa (3) no doubt found healing in Mandos. Maybe he walks with our Mother even now, roaming the hills of Valinor.

 
That will not be my fate. As I lie mortally wounded after my brothers and I destroyed the Havens of Sirion, the smells of the sea and of my own blood in my nostrils, I know with certainty that darkness everlasting lies ahead. For that is what we called down on ourselves should we fail to regain a Silmaril. We did fail, and I will not have another chance, for my fëa is slipping away.

 
Ambarussa, my brother, I wish you had swayed me, I wish I had stayed to remain one with you. We would have burned together then, a grievous yet not a hopeless death.
Umbarto you were... But no... that is not true... I see it now...
I was Umbarto...
 

 
THE END
 

(1)Maedhros; (2) Fingon (3) Quenya for soul, spirit

A/N: Most of Ambarussa's dialogue witeumleuml;anor is directly quoted froe Hie History of Middle-earth, Vol. 12, pp. 354,355.